A record of life in the neighborhood of Bucktown in Chicago.
Where by "record of life", I mostly mean pictures of my grade-school-age son and preschooler twins. And by "Bucktown" I now mean a totally different neighborhood in a suburb of Chicago.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Early Documentation

The first month is almost gone, and it's getting blurry already. So I'm going to document things quickly, as I think of them:

The twins were born at 34 weeks 5 days; my water broke at 4 in the morning, we were in the car on the way to the hospital at 4:15, and Spence was sent off with Uncle J by 5:30 or so, so I was in surgery by 6:15 (two transverse babies => automatic C-section.) Babies were worked on, each with their own team, and then wheeled around so RB and I could wave "Bye" before they went to the NICU.

Surgery was uneventful, though I bled more than they liked afterwards - if I recall correctly, almost 2 liters of blood came out as they pounded painfully on my abdomen. They called back my OB, and just as they were deciding to wheel me back into the OR to deal with the bleeding, it stopped. From my perspective, it wasn't too bad: lots of shivering, lots of poking me with needles (at some point there were 3 different people poking various points on my hands and arms looking for a vein - apparently I don't have them), and, the worst bit, "stomach massage" every 5-15 minutes, basically poking hard at my abdomen to see how much blood came out this time. RB made it to the NICU to see the babies at some point in the morning, and by 1pm or so I was cleared to go up and see them (wheeled in a gurney) before going to my room.

My recovery was pretty uneventful - not too much pain medication required, really, the hardest bit was trying to make sure I woke up to pump my breasts every 3 hours at night, when I really kind of wanted to sleep.

Teddy spent just 5 days in the NICU, mostly a result of the hospital protocol (if they had been born one day later they wouldn't automatically gone to the NICU). He was only a 5 pounder, but scrappier than his big sister - and almost from the start he was pretty dedicated to continuous eating as a way of life. His placenta was the one that ruptured - medical knowledge may suggest that was just because he was closer to the exit, but we suspect that he was just tired of his sis getting more of the resources in utero.

Lizzie was in the NICU for 10 days - I'm told that often the bigger twin has more strain on their heart, and has a few more problems than the smaller one. She had trouble staying awake to eat in the NICU, as well a a few apnea events, pretty normal for babies 5-6 weeks early.

The NICU nurses commented that their eating habits were pretty dissimilar, and they still are - Teddy eats slowly, and takes a long time, and will never, of his own volition, stop eating. He will eat until his stomach is filled way past capacity, then he will spit the excess up, and then he will just keep on eating until he is asleep. Lizzie wouldn't wake up to eat much at all at first, but when she did, she was a chugger: Teddy will take 20 minutes to down his first 1 1/2 ounces, Lizzie will do the same in about 3 minutes, give a big belch, and collapse into a food coma (at least until half an hour later, when it repeats.)